WASH first -COVID-19 response
Living in a rural Hagugeta Kuni kebele of Shameshemene district in the Oromia Regional State, Woyitue had very little information about the COVID-19 pandemic as well as its preventive measures.
Amref Health Africa has engaged in a series of efforts to support the federal, regional, zonal, and woreda level governments in COVID-19 response through close coordination and collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, and Regional Health Bureaus.
Our COVID-19 interventions support response activities in a total of 94 woredas across eight regional and administrative states. We have prioritized coordination and collaboration, streamlining efforts through taskforces and joint response committees; risk communication and community engagement, mobilizing volunteers and health workers to disseminate key COVID-19 messaging to over 2 million through campaigns and door to door outreach; community and facility-based surveillance, digitally training nearly 20,000 health extension workers and 1,600 supervisors for screening, referral, and case tracking, and developing and launching interoperable surveillance tools for health systems; and infection prevention and control (IPC) disseminating IPC guidelines and trainings to health facilities and more than 500 health workers, providing PPE to over 150 facilities and 10,000 individuals, building sanitation facilities in schools for over 15,000 students, and securing water points for handwashing in health facilities and communities reaching nearly 35,000 individuals.
The fragility of the health landscape in Ethiopia has revealed that the public health infrastructure, now, perhaps more than ever before, is leaning on the support of partners like Amref Health Africa to address critical gaps in emergency preparedness and to respond vigorously to COVID-19
